Return to Current Issue

Gale Cincotta's voice would often boom above the din of our office, singling me out for a reaction by yelling, "Mariano, what do you think of this idea?"

I would then join Cincotta at her desk, where we would argue back and forth about another one of her ideas.

This past year, we discussed at length her idea about getting the utility companies to include warning notices about predatory lending in their monthly bills, which they mail out to customers.

Cincotta's constant refrains to me were, "Do you think we can we get someone to steal this idea?" and "I don't care who gets credit for doing it, as long as it helps the neighborhoods!"

We're all filled with brilliant ideas But the trick is to make them successful. And that is where the real work starts.

Five years ago, one of our many ideas was cutting off mortgage companies who were ripping off the Federal Housing Administration's program and our neighborhoods.

Over the years, NPA groups - both locally and nationally - have had many battles with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Administration. Our main goal was to get these federal agencies to cut off sleazy mortgage companies who had a constant high rate of foreclosures from doing any business with FHA. These mortgage companies were not interested in forbearance to help keep families in their homes. Their dirty business created thousands of abandoned buildings, helping to further destroy neighborhoods across the country.

And what started out as an issue in our neighborhoods soon grew into an idea for a solution and we began sewing the seeds for a national campaign.

NPA won a major victory in 1999 when HUD/FHA committed to starting a program called "Credit Watch." This program listed the sleaze ball mortgage companies, which had been cut off from doing business with the government based on their high rates of foreclosure. The program caused the mortgage banker industry to whine about how unfair it was and to spend big bucks to file a legal challenge.

Meanwhile, neighborhood groups jumped for joy about the program!

It's one thing to see an idea turn into a program but it is truly astounding to see the idea turned into a law.

In the 2002 HUD/VA appropriations bill, there is a part amending a certain section of the National Housing Act to include this idea and program! The new law gives the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development the ability to terminate a mortgage lender if they believe they are a risk to the FHA program because of a high foreclosure rate.

The idea for Credit Watch, started as a dream, an idea, in the neighborhoods. And within a few years, because of our fights and victories, we now see this program as law. It occurred to me that this continuum of an "idea to law" process started 30 years ago with the Community Reinvestment Act. Many people are getting loans today because of this law and they don't know anything about the fight to get and save CRA.

But that is what we are here to do. Strengthen neighborhoods and build leadership, not only for the people we work with now but also for the people who will reap the rewards in the future.

At this December's advanced staff training, one session was titled: "How do you, as an organizer or director, define success for yourself?"

It seems to me that one measure of success of an organizer is having the imagination to come up with an idea, the courage to push that idea into action and the bulldog tenacity to turn it into reality.

Victor Hugo, a French author (who would have been an interesting NPA leader) once wrote, "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come!"